Life and Times in Oroville

Table Mountain

Probably the most prominent feature in or around Oroville is Table Mountain. It’s much more prominent than the dam. In fact, it’s hard to miss it. You just look over thata way and there it is – big flat mountain that looks like somebody sliced off the top portion, probably about halfway down.

We heard a lot about the wildflowers up there, so shortly after we moved here and when we were pretty much unpacked, we went up to have a look for ourselves. Very nice! You could definitely call it gorgeous without being accused of overdoing it.

There was a school bus in the parking lot, with a lot of high school kids milling around and fanning out over the hilltop. We saw a lot of a lot of these kids during the course of the morning, since they were scampering and scrambling all over the place. Made me cringe to watch them galloping up and down those steep slippery trails in shoes not meant for that, but the kids were young and agile and did just fine. Old, clumsy me was in awe.

We started down a trail that followed a stream. The trail started out with a general downward trend and some rolling, but eventually narrowed down and dropped steeply into a canyon where the stream turned into a waterfall. It’s never a bad thing to stop and look at a waterfall. This one wasn’t big and spectacular, but it was very pretty.